THE REMINISCENCES OF CARL SCHURZ
and myself, “with you to Newcastle. You pass Helsingoer without stopping, and pay the Sound dues on your return. In stress of weather you will beach the vessel on the Swedish shore rather than return to a German port. If the wind suits you better for another harbor than Newcastle on the English or Scottish coast, you will sail there. The important thing is that you reach England as quickly as possible. I shall remember you if you carry out my orders punctually.” The captain, whose name was Niemann, may have received these instructions with some amazement, but he promised to do his best.
Some of our friends remained with us until the steam tug hitched to the “Little Anna” had carried us a short distance into the open sea. Then came the leave-taking. As Wiggers tells in an elaborate description of the scene in a German periodical, Kinkel threw himself sobbing into his arms and said: “I do not know whether I shall rejoice at my rescue, or shall mourn that like a criminal and an outcast I have to flee my dear fatherland!” Then our friends descended into the tug, and with grateful hearts we bade them farewell. They fired a salute with their pistols and steamed back to Warnemünde, where, according to Wiggers, they celebrated the accomplished rescue with a joyous feast.
Kinkel and I remained on the poop of our schooner and gazed after the little steamboat that carried our good friends away. Then our eyes rested upon the shore of the fatherland until the last vestige had disappeared in the dusk of the evening. In our halting conversation now and then the question would recur: “When shall we return?” That a victorious uprising of the people would call us back, we both hoped fervently. It was a hope born of ardent desire and nursed by fond illusions. What would we have answered the prophet who at that moment had told us that first I, but only after
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